The people with a heart, life lessons from a death on Superior, guns and the illusion of protection, immigration and the dairy farm, and the power of eggs.

The Monday Morning Rouser: Mavis Staples.

1) THE PEOPLE WITH A HEART

It doesn’t take much to write a check to a charity. But jumping in a lake when it’s 13 degrees out to get you to write a check? That takes a special heart.

Over the next several weekends, thousands of people will participate in the Special Olympics Polar Plunge. On Saturday, the Plunge came to White Bear Lake. Here’s a bit of an honor roll of people with big hearts…

Famed fishing guide Jim Hudson died this weekend when his snowmobile fell through the Lake Superior ice off Bayfield. Even with as cold as it’s been, some ice isn’t safe.

He made this video a month ago.

He was married to the photographer who took this iconic photo last summer…

“All he wanted to do was to teach others about the lake and the importance of preserving and taking care of it,” Hannah Stonehouse Hudson told the Duluth News Tribune. “He was living his dream.”

He had been a cop, but quit to pursue being a fishing guide.

“He taught us to love life and never do something you don’t love,” his wife said.

3) THE ILLUSION OF PROTECTION

Writer Charlie Quimby, who divides his world between Minnesota and Colorado, I believe, has written an outstanding essay on the challenges of managing mental illness and he guns. He should know. The essay is about the day his father killed himself.

He was a leader in the bank and the community, and he was supposed to be strong. He sought help, but he was also reluctant to let his illness be known. His sense of failed responsibility to other people only compounded his distress.

Far away in Minnesota, I was told there was nothing I could do here to help, that he was not himself and I should wait to visit until he was better. We all thought he was going to get better.

And then we got the call to come home.

One morning my father awoke, started his morning routine, waited for my mother to get into the shower, and then he went downstairs to the family room with a gun.

We’ll never know if he’d planned his death all along or if it was an impulse. A reaction to his medications. A final loss of hope. Or, the most chilling thought of all, that he feared harming someone in his family when reality and nightmares crossed over into each other.

Almost 30 years later, we’ve each made our separate peace with not knowing.

Quimby says we should be wary of passing laws that appear to offer protection but fail to “address the realities of isolation, irrational thought and the ready availability of the most lethal means of suicide.”

The dairy industry may be at the center of a push for immigration reform. In the dairy state — Wisconsin — more than 40 percent of the employees are immigrants and 90-percent of them are from Mexico.

They aren’t migrant laborers, however. Their jobs are year-round, and that’s the problem. They can’t get the H-2a visa they’re required to have to work in the U.S.

“It’s not a surprise to any of us that some of the workers on dairy farms today are not legal. It’s an uncomfortable situation for both them and their employers,” Jim Holte, president of Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation, tells the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The situation calls on a familiar theme — U.S. citizens don’t want the jobs.

Farmers say most people don’t want to milk cows or take care of animals when, for the same starting wage of $10 to $12 an hour, they could find a job that’s less physically demanding.

After a printing plant in Waterloo closed and left hundreds of people out of work, only a couple of them applied for jobs at nearby Crave Brothers Dairy Farm, which requires staffing 24 hours a day, 365 days a week.

It’s challenging to find qualified help, even in a rural community where many people were born and raised on a farm, said farm owner Mark Crave.

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators has drafted a set of principles to rewrite the country’s immigration laws. The legislation would cover border security, guest workers and employer verification, and a path to citizenship for the 11 million people already in the country illegally. Today’s Question: What would you change about U.S. immigration laws?

As the country debates how to reduce gun violence, emergency room doctors have succeeded in reducing the number of gun-related deaths. The success comes from having to deal with bullet wounds on a regular basis, and from a few basic procedural changes. NPR will report on how smarter trauma care is saving more gunshot victims.

MPR’s Marianne Combs profiles another “art hero.” Maria Genne takes her modern dance troupe into V.A. hospitals and senior assisted living facilities and infuses the elderly with new life and vigor using music, movement and song.

Representatives for Minnesota students want to restructure the State Grant program to give part-time students a more equitable share of the money. MPR’s Alex Friedrich will have the story.

About the blogger

Bob Collins has been with Minnesota Public Radio since 1992, emigrating to Minnesota from Massachusetts where he was VP of programming for Berkshire Broadcasting Co. He was an editor at the RKO Radio Network in New York, and WHDH Radio in Boston. He is the founder of the MPR News’ website. He is a private pilot and flies an airplane he built.

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This morning’s rouser–wow! Thanks for posting that. That raised goose pimples for me. I’ve never heard of Mavis Staples before, but now I’ll have to seek out other works by her. Beautiful way to start the week, beautiful sentiment in the song, especially on those hard days we all have.

Bob Collins

Want to see how this song is 99% the person singing it? Go here and see how it can be massacred.

Chuck

Oh man! Bob, taking a shot at a Minnesota icon. I’m chuckling at your choice of the word “massacre.” Unfortunately for Mr Keillor, that is the correct word. I could listen to only about 30 seconds before I couldn’t hear the song over the sound of my laughter. On the other hand, if he were singing this live during a performance rather than during a “studio session,” the song would likely leave a very different, much more positive impression.

Bob Collins

He has sung it in a live performance. It doesn’t. :*)

I’d love to hear Jearlyn Steele give it a shot, though.

BJ

5) THE POWER OF EGGS

Amazing.

Christin

Thanks for number 5. That is one smart kid! And brave.

Robert Moffitt

“Hard Times Come Again No More” has been a favorite old-timey song of mine since I first heard it in a freeby CD I got from MPR (Thanks).

Mavis Stables (who I saw perform with Bonnie Raitt at last’s years State Fair) really nailed it. Thanks for sharing.